I have had many prescriptions from my GP over the past 9 years to relieve pain & improve mobility after a fall off a building onto scaffolding that taught me a good lesson. ( Don’t be stupid & climb random objects when drunk )!

As I have never been too happy about taking prescription medication, I have looked into natural ways to control inflammation & when I cycled fro Vietnam to Cambodia last year, the doctor that accompanied us on the trip thought I was a bit mental at first when he saw me drinking bright yellow water & found that I was putting turmeric extract into most of my drinking water.

His attitude towards this really changed after a couple of days & then thought that my way of managing my body was ( although new to him ) a good way to curb inflammation.

I have also started giving some of my daily mug of turmeric tea to my greyhound, if she has had a sprain & this seems to help her too.

I found this recipe, that I have added to my daily diet from James Wongs, Grow Your Own Drugs. It is called Teh Halia & is a Malaysian recipe.

I buy my fresh ginger & turmeric roots from a local Thai supermarket & then make up a couple of weeks worth of base paste at a time. Even when wearing latex gloves when preparing the fresh root I often have yellow stained hands afterwards as I usually forget to don gloves again when washing my pestle & mortar.

Below is James Wongs recipe off his Grow Your Own Drugs website for Teh Halia ( stretched ginger tea ). The stretching part is explained in the recipe: a bit messy but fun, delicious & a massive help to those who suffer joint pain

TURMERIC ‘TEH HALIA’ FOR ARTHRITIS

3 sticks fresh turmeric or 4g dried
Thumb-sized piece fresh ginger root
Few pinches black pepper
250ml whole milk
250ml water
1 tsp black tea leaves
Palm sugar, to taste (or maple syrup or brown sugar)

1. Peel and chop the fresh turmeric, if using (being careful not to stain surfaces or hands). Peel and grate the ginger. Put into a mortar (with the dried turmeric, if using) and add a few pinches of black pepper, then pound with the pestle until you get a smooth paste.

2. Combine the paste with the milk, water and tea leaves in a pan and simmer on a low heat for 10-20 minutes, or until the liquid is reduced by half. Strain. Sweeten with palm sugar to taste, and stir.

3. Before drinking, pour the Teh between two containers, holding them the maximum width apart to aerate the tea as much as possible and produce a froth on top. Despite not having too much of a medicinal effect on the remedy, this is more than just a flamboyant whim. Aerating the mix improves its flavour by making it easier for your tongue to perceive the chemicals that give the drink its unique taste.

USE: Make the Teh up as you need it, and drink at once. Take daily to help with arthritis, aches and pains in the joints, psoriasis, Crohn’s disease and other inflammatory conditions.

STORAGE: The paste keeps for up to 1 month in the refrigerator.

QUICK-FIX TEH HALIA

112g dried turmeric
28g dried ginger
½ tsp black pepper
25g black tea leaves
140g brown granulated sugar

Stir together, then store in a dry, airtight tin. Makes 14 cups - or one a day. To make up into a Teh, place 5-6 teaspoons of the mixture in a pan with 250ml whole milk and 250ml water, then simmer over a low heat for 10-20 minutes, or until reduced by half. Strain and serve. The mixture will keep in an airtight tin for 2 weeks.

.

Minor kitchen burns:-

Even if you do not like the taste of it one ingredient I think you should always have in a kitchen is HONEY. After working for years in commercial kitchens, I swear by the use of honey when a minor burn occurs. The amount of burns suffered in commecial kitchens is huge. The first time I was offered a jar of honey after a burn I thought they were joking, but I tried it and have used it every time since. Applying a thin layer of honey to the skin & leaving it on for a while first takes out the heat of the burn, but it also helps to prevent blistering. You can have a special burn treatment jar of honey by adding a few drops of teatree oil to the jar to make it even more effective. I have also heard of this being used for healing a dog bite inflicted on a lady who said the healing of the bite was clean & rapid by using honey & teatree to treat it with.

Potato poultice:-

Well, if you don’t like or don’t have any honey, try this remedy. Peel a potato & grate it. Grab a handful of the grated spud, give it a gentle squeeze and place it upon the effected area. This poultice again draws out the heat from the burn, but as always with minor burn treatments, including the one above, running the effected area under cold water is the first thing to do. You can wrap some cloth over the potato poultice and gently tie it around where your skin is burnt to be able to leave it on for a longer period.

Sunburn:-

I think that using Aloe Vera for sunburn is very well known & there are lots of products available for sunburn which include this great plant as it’s main ingredient. If you do get sunburnt & you do not have any Aloe products to hand or an Aloe plant close by to pick your own skin soother than this one is much easier to find.

 A good, old fashioned, simple teabag.

A used teabag, cooled and dabbed onto the skin, helps to take the heat out of the burn & prevent blistering. This, I think, is due to the tannins in the tea but it does work & you should never be too far away from a nice cup of tea.

No, this is no discounted special offer. Just the wonderful power of nature itself. No Dr’s. No painful red, burning face for days & days.

I have never, ever facied the idea of having a chemical peel to make me look younger, get rid of my lines or whatever reasons people put themselfs through unessesary rish & pain for.

But…… that has changed. I will probably now have 1 weekly, or at least on a regular basis.

There is a fab series running at the moment called ” Grow your own drugs “.

Etnobotanist James Wong shows how to make natural treatments for certain ailments, such as motion sickness, insomnia, and the common cold as well as showing how you can make your own beauty treatments using bits of nature picked from your garden & hedgerows or local shop.

One of the treatments in his episode about fruit was a kiwi & papaya face mask.

I tried it tonight & it is great!

All you need is:

1 kiwi fruit

1 lime

1/2 papaya

2 sachets of gelatine

click on this link to see all James Wongs recipies in the eries or to view episode:

www.bbc.co.uk/growyourowndrugs

I enjoyed the preparation of making the peel in my kitchen & the applied it warm. It felt & smelt wonderful.

I left it on for 1 hour & sat at my desk, perusing the net peeling bits off my face. The bits I peeled off looked like transparrant satsuma peel. When I felt that I was being mingin enough, peeling away at my face I went and washed my face in warm water. My face now feels smooth as a babys bum & feels, oh so clean. I don’t think my face has felt any cleaner after a sauna & steamroom session. It’s that good! And still a bit tingly now, 1 hour after rinsing. But, it is a clea tingle, not a stingy one.

When I was peeling the drier parts it reminded me of a slightly evil thing I did years ago to an ex boyfriend.

We were sitting on the floor, in a darkened room, infront of an open fire, slightly inebriated & watching the original Alien film. I got up to go to the loo during an ad break & saw on my bathroom shelf a peel off face mask. I applied it a sat rapidly in front of the tv again. I waied ’til a second before the bit where the dogs head splits open like a banana & an alien bursts out of it. I pocked my ex in the ribs and said hey watch this & pulled my face off! He freaked for a second. Much better reaction than I anticipated.

Anyway, I really recomend this kiwi & papaya face mask. I also recomend the programme ” grow your own drugs “.

James Wong as mentioned above, is an ethnobotanist.   Ethobotany is the scientific study of the relationship between people & plants & combines the knowledge of botany, chemistry & anthropology.

Groovy job.  Gardening should be in the school curriculum.

I first tried dandelion coffee a couple of years ago as I was wanting to detox from caffine for a while. My friend had some dandelion coffee which she offered me to try. I rushed to the health food shop the next day to get myself some as I liked it so much. With regular coffee I take milk, but when I drink dandelion coffee I much prefer it black. It has a deep, earthy taste which to me has a hint of liquorice to the taste. The bitterness of the dandelion stimulates the liver, bile flow and digestion.

I have not yet tried to make my own, but I do intend to dig up the roots of dandelions sometime when I see a large area covered in dandelions and to dry them out & roast them and make some of my own. Yet annother thing to add to my things to do list to expand upon my homemade kitchen larder.

I have watched a film recently which has changed how I would react if either myself, or anyone who is emotionally close to me is ever diagnosed with cancer.  As 1:4 people develop cancer at some point in their life, and many people that I had the pleasure to know have passed already, I hope to be able to share this information with anyone who is not determined that only conventional means of medicine, can or should be tried as a  treatment or cure.

The film is A WORLD WITHOUT CANCER narrated by G.Edward Griffin in 1974. Please note though that Griffin is a film maker and it is Ernst T Krebs who advocates the use of Laetrile as a cancer therapy.

About Ernest T Krebs  http://www.karlloren.com/biopsy/p76.htm

In the book & film G.Edward Griffin exposes the politics involved in cancer treatment and it remains as controversial today as it was when it was first written.

This treatment is NOT FDA approved, which is no surprise as they are in such cohoots with the government & Monsanto to name just one company who’s conduct is a disgrace.This is a company who wants all our lettuce and spinach to be irradiated !! It is actually ILLEGAL to use this treatment in America and the FDA have had people arrested for holding meetings on this controversial way of treating cancer patients. So what is this radical treatment that worries the FDA so much ………. VITAMIN B17 or Leatrile, also known as Amygdaline.

Yes, it is just a vitamin but hey, if you look into the logic, and the history of medicine and the way that the health system operates you may think of cancer treatment as a total farce and believe that nutrition is the answer to our world wide cancer problem.

In this film he  portrays cancer as being a deficiency disease unlike conventional medicine explaining cancer to be a chronic metabolic disease. He uses a prime example of how cancer is a defficiency disease by reminding us of scurvy. It took 200 years for it to be commonly noted that scurvy was a Vitamin C defficiency. How many people died unnessesarily due to the medical professions disbelief or unrecognition that a lack of Vitamin C could cause the body so much harm.

Griffin was first given an insight to the use of vitamin treatment for cancer whilst on a fishing trip with physician John Richardson. Richardson had told Griffin how he had seen great results when treating cancer patients with Laetrile,  but  he faced oppostion from local medical authorities because his treatment was not FDA approved.

The FDA even went to great lengths to show Laetril in the worst possible light by running a campaign involving the putting up of 10,000 posters in post offices and issuing bulletins to the medical community. So no wonder that today the mainstream consider Laetril to be toxic.

1953 California report

In 1953 a report written by Dr Henry Garland and Dr E. M. McDonald of the California Medical Assiciations Cancer Advisory Commission, claims that no proof exists that Laetril is an effective treatment for cancer. These same two doctors also clamed that there was no link between smoking and lung cancer!

I read earlier that Dr E. M. McDonald died in his bed when a fire was started by a cigatette. ( I have no idea if this is true, but if it is, it’s quite ironic.)

Laetrile versus conventional treatment.

Laetrile will only act on malignant cells, leaving any tumor intact but radiation therapy can blast the cancer into other parts of the body greatly increasin the risk of secondary cancer growth.

Cancer free societies

In the film it is mentioned that the Hunzakuts, peoples native of Hunza ( an area north of Pakistan ) often live to the ages of 100 even 120.

In Hunza society there is no cancer. Not one case of cancer exists within these people who are living in their native environment. The major factor for this seems to be that they consume so much nitrilocides including Vitamin B17 in their diet. One of the foodstuffs with the highest content of Vitamin B17 is the apricot seed. In Hunza a mans wealth is measured by the amount of apricot trees he owns.

http://longevity.about.com/od/longevitylegends/p/hunza.htm

What foods contain Laetrile

There is a good table on the link below showing foods that are high in Vitamin B17 and also atthe bottom is good guidelines as to how much of these foods is sensible to eat.

http://www.laetrile.com.au/copy.asp?sect=q2&page=foods

The above table was from a site by Angelo Rodriguez & if you click on the above link there can be found his and other peoples testimonials of their cancer treatments using Vitamin B17.

You will see, if you have read this and want  like me,to look into the controversy around this issue a little deeper find that Laetril contains cyanide. The film, A world without cancer does explain how this is not scary at all, but  that the cyanide is an important part of the Vitamins structure. Here is how Angelo explains things  …………………..

Hydrogen Cyanide must be FORMED!! There is no free Hydrogen Cyanide in laetrile floating around freely in our body waiting to harm us when we eat apricot seeds or take laetrile. The enzyme Beta-Glucosidase, and only that enzyme is capable of manufacturing and forming the Hydrogen Cyanide from Laetrile. If there are no cancer cells in the body, there is no beta-glucosidase. If there is no beta-glucosidase, no hydrogen cyanide will be formed from laetrile. Even if there were some other way to manufacture cyanide from laetrile in the body, the amount would be so minute it would have little, if any toxic effect. (see How does B17 kill Cancer?)

Laetrile does on the other hand contain the cyanide radical (CN-). So does Vitamin B12 , Cassava and strawberries and a host of other foods we consume. You never heard of anyone getting cyanide poison from vitamin B12 or from eating strawberries because it just does not happen. Lets also look at table salt which is made up of sodium Chloride (NaCl) and is very common in most households. Yet, did you know pure sodium (Na+) is one of the most toxic substances known to man? Yet in their form locked together they are not toxic. Any good toxicologist will tell you sugar is 20 times more toxic than laetrile and salt is also much more toxic.

All I can suggest is that you do more research yourself and keep an open mind.